Thursday, May 21, 2009
Legislature / Politics / Woods Senate Republicans: Let's Just Say No to the Green Economy
Posted by Jeff Woods on Thu, May 21, 2009 at 10:29 AM
"We're taking a position on something that we don't know what it does. I don't want to vote for something if I don't know if it's true. I haven't seen the plan. What is it? Congress is trying to deal with an issue of great magnitude and complexity. It's very likely to change before it achieves a majority vote in the Congress."Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga, made the larger point that members of his party ought to be hammering home at every opportunity: While the economy burns, the new Republican majority is Nashville is playing in the sandbox. Here's some of what Berke said:
"Our middle-class families are hurting in ways that I certainly have never seen. When I go home on the weekend, Republicans and Democrats alike come up to me amazed by what's going on up here. They have a simple question: 'What are y'all going to do to help us?' "If we were serious about addressing this issue in our body, we might be considering a resolution outlining what we would support rather than playing politics ... I rise today to say enough. We need to focus on progress, not posturing. We should be here for discussions of our future, not diversions of our past."
Comments (7)
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It doesn't matter if the TN GOP doesn't like cap and trade.
If cap and trade were to be implemented, and the TN GOP forced us to "sit out" (whatever that means), Tennessee would continue to plummet into the status of an economic backwater that can only attract industry through taxpayer giveaways.
So they could continue to sulk about the fact that the GOP doesn't control policy at a national level, they're willing to choke the state. Way to stick to your principles, assholes.
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The "real" Jack Johnson would be so ashamed if he knew that State Sen. Jack Johnson was trying to screw over our environment. Curious George is about to go apes*** on Jack Johnson.
"Jurassic Park"?
I am sitting in the Margaretville, NY library laughing out loud.
Stop
But that was a great little speech by Andy Berke, pushing the notion that they should maybe have an idea instead of just saying no to everything. Who let the sane man on Capitol Hill? And isn't that against Senate rules?
It's interesting that the cheerleaders for the big government power grab that is cap and trade seem to think that their unproven and unproveable scaremongering over "global warming" isn't effective enough to succeed in getting what they want so that they feel the need to peddle the old broken window fallacy claim of "green jobs" boosting the economy on top of it.
Hey Gilbert, keep your petty politics out of sound environmental policy.........
Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is a 1997 international treaty which came into force in 2005, which binds most developed nations to a cap and trade system for the six major greenhouse gases.[25] (The United States is the only industrialized nation under Annex I which has not ratified and therefore is not bound by it.) Emission quotas were agreed by each participating country, with the intention of reducing their overall emissions by 5.2% of their 1990 levels by the end of 2012. Under the treaty, for the 5-year compliance period from 2008 until 2012,[26] nations that emit less than their quota will be able to sell emissions credits to nations that exceed their quota.
It is also possible for developed countries within the trading scheme to sponsor carbon projects that provide a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in other countries, as a way of generating tradeable carbon credits. The Protocol allows this through Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) projects, in order to provide flexible mechanisms to aid regulated entities in meeting their compliance with their caps. The UNFCCC validates all CDM projects to ensure they create genuine additional savings and that there is no carbon leakage.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that the financial effect of compliance through trading within the Kyoto commitment period will be 'limited' at between 0.1-1.1% of GDP among trading countries.[27] By comparison the Stern report placed the costs of doing nothing at five to 20 times higher.[28]
Nothing is a "sound environmental policy" on your say so - or the say of any United Nations created body.
There has never been anything ever created by that body that wasn't purely poltical.
And they certainly don't know a damn thing about economics.
